Million Love Songs(64)

Joe laughs. ‘Look what happened last time we said that.’

‘True, but we both mean it this time. We could go out to dinner with them or to a film. Nothing heavy. See how we get on. I’m really happy with you but, at the same time, I feel as if I’m in one small compartment of your life. We’re having to snatch small moments when we can. If we are going to take this forward, then I’d like to be more than that.’

‘Joe!’ One of the club members shouts him from the jetty. ‘You’re up again.’

He holds up his hands.

‘Go,’ I say. ‘That’s fine. Just tell me you’ll think about it.’

‘OK,’ he agrees.

I squeeze his hand. ‘Thank you.’ He stands and brushes the grass from his wetsuit. ‘Be careful out there.’

Then he bounds down to the jetty and I settle back in my deckchair. The sun’s on my face, the breeze is in my hair, life is good and I can’t help but smile.





Chapter Fifty-Three





I’m on the train with Charlie and we’re heading up to London. The barriers were open at the local station so we didn’t buy a ticket and are hoping that there’s no ticket inspector on the train. I’m working on the theory that the prices are normally so flipping expensive that if I manage a freebie every now and then, it balances it out and brings train travel down to the realm of just over-priced rather than outright extortion. What we’ll do at the other end, I’m not sure. However, I’m leaving Charlie in charge of our criminal activity.

‘Tell me again,’ I say. ‘We’re doing what?’

She looks up from painting her fingernails. The whole carriage smells of pear drops from the polish and people are tutting in that particularly passive/aggressive British way.

‘We’re going to hang round the hotel that the boys are probably staying in.’

‘Probably?’

‘Someone swears she saw Mark there this morning and so we’re going to check it out.’ She gives me a fixed stare. ‘There’ll be lots of Thatters there.’ The collective name for Take That fans. Sometimes, not surprisingly, known as Mad Thatters. ‘You’ll have to pretend that you really like them.’

‘I do.’

‘But in the way that I really like them, not in the half-hearted oh-I-buy-all-their-CDs way that you like Kylie.’

‘I go to Kylie’s concerts. As many as finances will allow.’

‘Ah, but if it was a choice of eating or buying a ticket for a Kylie concert what would you do?’

‘Eat, obviously.’

Charlie gives me a smug look. ‘I rest my case. You are a merely a fairweather fan. I stuck by Gary even through the wilderness years.’

‘Yes, but I’m sure Gary wouldn’t want you to go hungry for him.’

‘I am very hungry for him,’ she quips and then laughs lasciviously at her own joke, frightening the elderly man sitting next to us. Poor bloke.

‘Don’t they get annoyed by all their fans chasing them around?’

‘We’ve been with them from the start,’ Charlie says. ‘Some of us. Effectively, we’ve bought their houses, their posh cars, their places in the sun. There are bricks in Gary’s walls that I have personally paid for. I think they owe us a little of their time, don’t you?’

Fair point.

‘If we all suddenly dropped them and started following, say, Spandau Ballet, where would they be?’

‘That’s never going to happen, is it?’

Charlie grins at me. ‘Not while there’s breath in my body.’ She holds out her nails for me to admire.

‘Nice.’

‘I was going to get them painted with butterflies for Wonderland and all that, but I ran out of time.’

‘Work gets in the way of a lot of things,’ I agree. ‘We could try to get some stick-on butterflies in Accessorize at Euston.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Charlie says.

So we manage to sneak out of an unguarded side entrance to Euston station and get our journey for free.

‘That’s a good omen,’ Charlie assures me.

Our odds are further increased when we do manage to find some butterfly transfers to go on her nails. Result. One dirty, crowded Tube journey later – that we have to pay for – and we rock up at the five-star hotel where Take That are reportedly ensconced.

It’s very nice. I can’t think that I’ve been anywhere quite so smart before. Even the posh hotel that Mason took me to was more understated than this. It’s all wall-to-wall black marble and modern art. And I’m not even going to say where it is as everyone will then be heading down here and Charlie would kill me.

These days, I seem to spend a lot of time worrying about being murdered by Charlie.

Already, there are a dozen fans taking up the sofas in the bar area. Their Take That T-shirts are a bit of a giveaway. Charlie recognises them instantly as girls from the fan forum and they all have a group hug.

‘This is Ruby,’ she says. ‘A newbie Thatter.’

‘Hi. I am on the forum,’ I add, in case they think I’m an imposter. Though I have been lurking on there rather than contributing.

We order cocktails – at prices that only A-list celebrities would be comfortable with – and sit down. We hang out for the rest of the afternoon, talking, drinking more heinously-priced cocktails and gradually, we get more and more mellow.